Junglemonkey
In a perfect world, I'd have a sparkly unicorn rocket pony that shits
frozen margaritas. Instead I have a great family, too many animals, and
a day job that takes up a lot of my brain.
Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/junglemonkey
There was a time before the advent of modern, hygienic warfare that men went to battle wearing whatever they could strap to themselves to prevent the enemy from breaching their integumentary hulls and carrying whatever they thought might breach their enemies'. How did it work? How were battles actually fought? How could anyone tell who was fighting, or who won? What I know about battle makes it seem that every ancient military victory was nothing more than propaganda, because if you...
I was in Whole Foods yesterday, and walked by an endcap full of green boxes labeled "Complete Body Cleanse" (I almost said "I passed an endcap," but some puns are too low even for me). I thought to myself "We're already doing some planning for spring cleaning of the Co-Prosperity Sphere, so why not?
Now, I have to say this up front: I am not the sort of person who thinks that modern living is bad for you. Granted, I turn off my electricity once a week, make my food from scratch,...
I was in a restaurant yesterday, and I was explaining to the Pirate about how Rufus Wainwright has that kind of voice that's the epitome of the stereotype of gay men - a drawl wherein his lips never meet, he hisses every "s" and he uses too many superlatives. As I was explaining this, a gay couple was seated at a table next to us and I noticed that one of the pair was shooting me dirty looks. Or, he could have been looking innocently around the restaurant with his naturally beetle-browed,...
As a Buddhist living in a Western country, I feel caught between two
very different definitions of "happiness." Both traditions insist that
happiness is something worth striving for, a lifelong goal, but the
similarity ends there. Westerners are pummeled with images of the good
time they should be having all the time. Childhood should be an endless
birthday party, college should end with a spouse and large crowd of
lifelong best friends, one should wake up...
I realized this morning why my dreams never seem to have a real beginning. It's because my dreams are complete worlds that have history and memories of their own. I'm in one place or another because earlier in dreamtime, I made a decision to be there. The people with me were somewhere else before, and those memories are part of the package. It's why I love my dreams.
I visited my parents house with Badb. She and I were going to stay a few...
I was at FedEx with my kid the other day, and when we left, she observed that I'm not as antisocial as I like people to believe. The gentleman in front of me in line talked to us for a while about the benefits of living in such a small community. He was friendly and voluble and in the holiday spirit, and it felt good to be smiling and passing the time in line. Once at the front of the line, I talked a bit to the clerk, who was helpful and friendly (even when he mistakenly rang up my 12-foot...
I wanted to be a writer from the time I was little. When I wasn't reading, I was writing, and when I wasn't reading or writing, I was making stuff up and telling it to whoever was listening (as an adult, we call it "having a great imagination," but when I was a kid, they called it "lying through her teeth"). My efforts were normally greeted with pats on the head and "aren't you cute" sort of comments, but I learned early on that my very best efforts garnered the same amount of praise as my...
Can a single person be the source of a pathology?
I don’t mean in a “Patient Zero” kind of way, where one guy with tuberculosis or SARS or H1N1 spreads it to others. This isn’t a physical pathology. This is more of a mental thing.
And I don’t mean in that way that they’ve found individual cells in people’s brains that respond to a certain person, like Oprah Winfrey or Paris Hilton. This is a whole-brain thing – something I can think about and evaluate, rather than...
It's 11/15, and for the eighth year in a row, I'm in the middle of writing a novel. And for about the fourth year in a row, while everyone else is freaking out about how cuh-RAAAAZY they are to take on such a thing, I'll finish up with about 10 days' worth of actual work.
I feel like I'm in a sort of crummy limbo between those folks who are able to write fiction for a living and those folks who are content to continue writing as a hobby. I send stuff out regularly, but not...
In 1958, Chairman Mao implemented the Great Leap Forward - a scheme that would advance China's economy so quickly that by 1988, it would be as large and powerful as that of the United States. The Great Leap Forward abolished private property, putting tools, food, buildings - everything that kept China running and fed - into the hands of collectives. Each collective was asked to produce everything it needed - not just its own food and clothing, but the means of production themselves. They had...